Saudi Aramco said Sunday that it foiled an attempted $33 million trading unit fraud scheme before any damage was done.
According to Reuters, the Dhahran-based company said “the attempted fraud has been foiled and did not have any financial impact on either the two companies or on trading relations between them.”
The statement follows a report in the Indian Express that said fraudsters set up an email address similar to one used by an employee at India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited to deceive Saudi Aramco into rerouting a $33 million payment for naptha shipments.
A cyber police team investigating the incident told the paper that someone with knowledge of communications between Saudi Aramco and ONGC created the fake email account.
The fraudster used the account to con Saudi Aramco into depositing the payment into a Bangkok bank account controlled by the perpetrator in September.
The scheme was detected by ONGC earlier this month when the company realized it never received payments for two naptha shipments to Saudi Aramco.
The name of those involved in the scheme have not been released.
